


i remember it all too well

by orphan_account



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 19:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4533732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ronan finally returned to Monmouth in the early hours of the morning, he found a small girl in an aquamarine polo shirt that was clearly too big on her, curled up into herself in a bed that a corpse had once slept in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i remember it all too well

On Sunday, he dies.

It’s not a momentous occasion. There’s no fanfare, just him and her and the hornets. He would have hated it, she knows, he would have hated the silence of it. It wasn’t great, it was painful, and she was never sure if she’d killed him or made his life just that bit better, in those horrible final moments.

 _Both,_ she decides. 

 _What happened to never falling in love_? She’d been ready for it, she’d had months to prepare for the moment the king fell, but it still hit her hard. _How do you prepare for that?_

* * *

 

On Monday, she phones his parents. 

She doesn’t want to be the bringer of bad news, but someone has to do it and she’s not going to put anyone else through that. Especially not Ronan, who’s spent all that time since he died drinking away the pain. Especially not Adam, who’s spent the whole day studying to get his mind off his best friend’s death.

“Mrs. Gansey? This is Blue Sargent, I’m a…friend of your son’s.” She notices her slip-up just after it leaves her mouth, and corrects herself. “I _was_ a friend of your son’s.” She can hear the silence on the other end. “Mrs. Gansey, your son has…has…” Blue trails off.  She can’t say the word. _Dead. Just say it, Blue. He’s dead_

“He’s passed away,” she finally says. And she can hear the choking from the other end as a woman thirty years her senior breaks down in tears just as Blue had a few days ago. 

* * *

 

On Tuesday, she goes into Monmouth.

Ronan isn’t there, and she hopes that he’s with Adam instead of buying alcohol at some shady store that sells it to minors, or at one of those substance parties. But she can’t find it in her to care as much as she should where Ronan is.

She finds his horribly bright shirt, the aquamarine one that Blue had always hated. But she can’t bring herself to hate it anymore.

It’s so much bigger than anything that would fit her, but she still slips it on. It still carries the scent of a dead boy – mint and wheatgrass and _him_ , pure undiluted Gansey. It hurts to think his name.

When she hugs herself, she finally becomes aware of her insignificance, her unimportance, that she’s just a blot in the universe. If there was a god out there, he didn’t care for Blue, because if he had then he would have spared him. If only to bring back her steady heartbeat and to make her feel less like a part of her had died with him.

When Ronan finally returned to Monmouth in the early hours of the morning, he found a small girl in an aquamarine polo shirt that was clearly too big on her, curled up into herself in a bed that a corpse had once slept in.

* * *

 On Wednesday, it’s his funeral.

It’s more of a memorial, since they don’t have his body. It’s still there in Cabeswater, sitting on the ley line just like Noah’s was. The idea of Gansey coming back like Noah had wasn’t a favorable idea, but it would have been enough.

Blue can’t bring herself to attend. She looks at the church gates several times, wondering if she should go in, but decides over and over again that she shouldn’t. It would just hurt too much.

Later, she goes and fills her Nino’s shift. It soon proves to be her last shift, after slapping a crude Aglionby boy who looked a little too much like him. She knows she didn’t see him there, but everything reminds her just a little too much of him nowadays.

* * *

On Thursday, she goes back to school again.

It helps, she realizes, to have something to get her mind off him. To channel her sadness and anger into mindless math problems and forget the aching hole in her heart for six hours. Maybe it doesn’t change the fact that he’s dead, gone, but she can pretend for some time.

_I just want to pretend. I just want to pretend that I could._

She goes back to Monmouth and finds Ronan, this time not drunk, but staring at Gansey’s Henrietta model. That he’d destroyed in his anger and frustration. It hurt to see one of the few remaining parts of Gansey destroyed, but it doesn't hurt as much to see it just sitting there on the floor, pretending that the boy who had built it was still there to finish what he'd started.

Blue comforted him. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but they were both broken people and they both needed it. And by the end, Blue didn’t know if she’d comforted Ronan or if Ronan had comforted her. _Both._

* * *

On Friday, she calls his number. 

She knows he won’t pick up, but she dials it anyway, if only to hear his voice one more time on the answering machine. And she leaves voicemails. It feels good, to be able to talk to someone, even if it’s talking to someone who won’t talk back.

Then she calls Adam. And they talk. It’s the first real conversation they’ve had for a long time; it was always Ronan and Blue, or Noah and Blue, or especially Gansey and Blue, who had the conversations. There was something awkward about having conversations with Adam, probably because of their history.

She soon realizes just how easy it is to talk to Adam. He’s a good listener, and a good talker, and he knows what she’s talking about.

“I’m falling apart, Adam,” she whispered down the line.

And he whispered back, “So am I.”

* * *

On Saturday, Ronan nearly kills himself again.

When the ambulances stream outside St. Agnes and Matthew sobs and Declan looks like the world was just pulled from underneath him, Blue feels horror at the idea that he might not make it. _Of course he will. He’s Ronan. He’ll always make it._

The idea of two of her raven boys dying within a week of each other is too much for Blue to handle. She spends the night crying in the bathroom and waiting for a call back from Adam to tell her that Ronan was okay, that he was going to make it, that he was fine. Or a call from Adam to tell her that Ronan was dead, that he was gone, that he was breaking down in a hospital room.

(Eventually, she gets the first call. She’s never been happier for a phone call in her life.)

* * *

On Sunday, Gansey comes back from the dead, but the damage has already been done.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from All Too Well by Taylor Swift. Thanks for reading!


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